Category: History

Romney Exits

The Daily Escape:

Northern Lights, Malletts Bay, Lake Champlain, Colchester, VT – September 2023 photo by Adam Silverman Photography

By now, everyone’s heard that Mitt Romney (R-UT) isn’t going to run for a second term in the Senate. From the WaPo:

“Romney, 76, said his decision not to run again was heavily influenced by his belief that a second term, which would take him into his 80s, probably would be less productive and less satisfying than the current term has been.”

He used the opportunity to say that Biden and Trump were too old to be the presidential candidates of their Parties, and they, like him, should stand aside and let the next generation of politicians take center stage.

But the big news was generated from a few quotes Romney made to McKay Coppins, who’s book about Romney is coming out in October. Coppins has a teaser article in The Atlantic in which Romney lets loose his ire against Trump (who Romney carefully cultivated in 2016 and 2017, when he was angling to be Secretary of State):

“So many Republican Senators privately expressed their support for Romney’s public criticism of Trump that the Utahan began keeping count, telling staffers he’d had more than a dozen nearly identical exchanges. He recalled one senior lawmaker complaining to him: “[Trump] has none of the qualities you would want in a president, and all of the qualities you wouldn’t.”

Romney told Coppins:

“Almost without exception, they shared my view of the president.”

This has earned Romney accolades from the media and from a few Democrats. Karen Tumulty in the WaPo credits Romney with “paving the way for national health-care reform…” This ignores the fact that Romney ran for president in 2012 promising to repeal Obamacare.

Yet, after reading The Atlantic article, the media used terms like “noble,” “principled,” and “courageous.” But there is nothing courageous about saying the right thing only when you’re on your way out the door.

Wrongo has had issues with Romney since his run for the presidency in 2012. In May of 2012, Wrongo wrote:

“Over the past few days, Mitt Myth Romney has taken credit for GM being alive and Osama Bin Laden being dead.”

On the auto bailout Wrongo had previously reported what Romney actually said about the auto industry bailout: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“On February 12, 2012, Romney said:  “Three years ago, in the midst of an economic crisis, a newly elected President Barack Obama stepped in with a bailout for the auto industry. The indisputable good news is that Chrysler and General Motors are still in business. The equally indisputable bad news is that all the defects in President Obama’s management of the American economy are evident in what he did.”

/snip/

“The president tells us that without his intervention things in Detroit would be worse. I believe that without his intervention things there would be better.”

Romney lied or changed his positions throughout his 2012 campaign against Obama. America is better off because he only received 206 votes in the Electoral College to Obama’s 332. He always was a plutocrat who’s political philosophy is basically trickle-down economics, low taxes and traditional religious cultural values.

There is room for those views in our politics, but Romney, who was the only Republican who twice voted to impeach Trump, could have done more to rally his fellow Senators to confront Mr. 91 counts. But, he’s gone from being the Republican nominee for president to being forced to leave politics just a decade later.

You may say “Thank God for Brave Men like Mitt Romney”, men with strong spines willing to stand up for what they believe and then march forward right out of the room!

Enough for this week, it’s time to let go of whatever is happening to Hunter Biden and his impeachable dad, and center ourselves for the government shutdown that’s coming at the end of the month. It’s time for our Saturday Soother!

Here in northwestern Connecticut, we’re seeing nights in the high 40° as summer draws to a close. Despite the threats from Hurricane Lee, let’s spend our Saturday Soother outside, sitting on the deck. To help you let go of the many insults of your week, listen to “Winter” (“Invierno”) from Astor Piazzolla’s “Four Seasons of Buenos Aires” (“Las Cuatro Estaciones Porteñas”). Piazzolla was an Argentine composer who is credited with developing the nuevo tango.

Wrongo and Ms. Right were fortunate to attend a concert last week which featured Vivaldi’s Four Seasons followed by Piazzolla’s Four Seasons of Buenos Aires. Piazzolla’s classical work often features tango like rhythms. Here is his “Winter” played by Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in Amsterdam, NL in 2014. The soloist is the conductor Liviu Prunaru:

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Remembering 9/11

The Daily Escape:

This mass includes parts of five floors of the North Tower of NYC’s World Trade Center that compacted on 9/11/2001 during the building’s collapse. iPhone photo by Wrongo taken at the 9/11 Memorial Museum, September 2016.

The above is among Wrongo’s favorite pieces at the 9/11 Memorial Museum. It is a charred and pitted lump of fused concrete, melted steel, carbonized furniture and other, less recognizable elements. It weighs between 12 and 15 tons and is four feet high. If you ever thought that humans who were in the Twin Towers when they collapsed might have survived, consider this pancake.

The 9/11 Memorial’s email today asked this question:

“Did you know that over 100 million Americans have been born since September 11, 2001?”

Although Wrongo has a grandson who was born later that week and who’s now turning 22, Wrongo had no idea that roughly 30% of Americans have no memory of this event that profoundly shaped America in the past 22 years.

What do those of us who do remember 9/11 want to tell those who can’t remember it? Maybe that there’s too much fear in America, and all of that fear is grinding us down. The visible scars of 9/11 are gone, but more than ever, America lives in persistent fear.

We distrust Russia. We worry about inflation. We worry that our budget deficit will bankrupt us. We fear for our kids’ safety while they’re in school. We worry that if we lose our job we won’t find another one. Some of us worry that we’ll never find the job we’re looking for. Some of us think the rest of us are Communists. The Lefties think the Righties are fascists, and we’re still afraid that ISIS will attack us on our streets. We fear the mob outside our gates trying to get in. We fear the immigrants already inside the gates.We think most of the news we see is fake. Many of us distrust our public school teachers.

Hell, we don’t trust our government!

Succumbing to so much fear has enabled the growth of internal threats that could end our democracy:

  • We’re so angry that we’ve lost much of our social cohesion
  • We aren’t willing to deal with income inequality
  • We’re seeing overt racism grow before our eyes
  • We see clear threats to the right to vote, or whether our votes will even count if we cast them

So today’s wakeup call is for America, particularly for those Americans born after 9/11. Don’t forget the heroes and the victims of 9/11, but please, learn to stop letting fear drive you as much as it drives those of us who are old enough to remember 9/11.

Here’s a 9/11 tune: The October 20, 2001 “Concert for New York” can’t be beat. It was a highly visible and early part of NYC’s healing process.

One of the many highlights of that 4+ hour show was Billy Joel’s medley of “Miami 2017 (seen the lights go out on Broadway)” and his “New York State of Mind”. Joel wrote “Miami 2017” in 1975, at the height of the NYC fiscal crisis. It describes an apocalyptic fantasy of a ruined NY that got a new, emotional second life after 9/11, when he performed it during the Concert for New York: 

Check out the audience reaction to Joel’s songs. That doesn’t look like fear. That’s where we all need to be today in 2023. It isn’t hyperbole to say that the city began its psychological recovery that night in Madison Square Garden. Please visit the 9/11 Memorial and Museum if you haven’t been there yet.

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Two Writers Who Speak To What America Needs

The Daily Escape:

Wukoki, Wupatli National Monument, AZ – September 2023 photo by David Erickson

September is underway, and we’re about to have a negotiation about government spending. But that doesn’t mean that the news this month will be any less stupid than last month’s. Also, as the Republican presidential candidates demonstrate every day, we don’t actually know whether the GOP is a dying Party or, the rising single Party of an authoritarian state.

Unless and until the traditional press presents these as the stakes, it is very unclear which it’ll end up being. With this as an introduction, Wrongo wants to introduce two writers who are attempting to break through our chain of bad policies and the bad ideology that threatens our democracy.

First, from Wesley Lowery in the Columbia Journalism Review:

“We find ourselves in a perilous moment. Democracy is under withering assault. Technological advances have empowered propagandists to profit through discontent and disinformation. A coordinated, fifty-year campaign waged by one of our major political parties to denigrate the media and call objective reality into question has reached its logical conclusion: we occupy a nation in which a sizable portion of the public cannot reliably tell fact from fiction. The rise of a powerful nativist movement has provided a test not only of American multiracial democracy, but also of the institutions sworn to protect it.”

Lowery is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter. He goes on to say:

“In 2020, I argued that the press had often failed this test by engaging in performative neutrality, paint-by-the-numbers balance, and thoughtless deference to government officials. Too many news organizations were as concerned with projecting impartiality as they were with actually achieving it, prioritizing the perception of their virtue in the minds of a hopelessly polarized audience…”

Lowery also says that news organizations often rely on euphemisms instead of clarity in clear cases of racism (“racially charged,” “racially tinged”) and acts of government violence (“officer-involved shooting”). He says that these editorial decisions are not only journalistic failings, but also moral ones:

“…when the weight of the evidence is clear, it is wrong to conceal the truth. Justified as “objectivity,” they are in fact its distortion.”

Lowery concludes by saying:

“It’s time to set aside silly word games and to rise to the urgent test presented by this moment.”

Second, Bob Lord is a tax attorney and associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. He also serves a senior advisor on tax policy for Patriotic Millionaires. At Inequality.org, he proposes a graduated wealth tax on the rich:

“The United States is experiencing a level of wealth inequality not seen since the original Gilded Age. This yawning gap between rich and poor has unfolded right out in the open, in full public view and with the support of both political parties.

A malignant class of modern robber barons has amassed unthinkably large fortunes. These wealthy have catastrophically impacted our politics. They have weaponized their wealth to co-opt, corrupt, and choke off representative democracy. They have purchased members of Congress and justices of the Supreme Court. They have manipulated their newfound political power to amass ever-larger fortunes.”

More from Lord:

“In well-functioning democracies, tax systems serve as a firewall against undue wealth accumulation. By that yardstick, our contemporary US tax system has failed spectacularly….Our nation’s current tax practices allow and even encourage obscene fortunes to metastasize while saddling working people with all the costs of that metastasizing.”

Lord along with the Patriotic Millionaires propose new legislation, called the Oligarch Act (Oppose Limitless Inequality Growth and Reverse Community Harms). It is being brought forward by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Summer Lee (D-PA). The Lees have developed a graduated wealth tax tied directly to the highest wealth in America. The Oligarch Act propose a set of tax rates that escalate as a taxpayer’s wealth escalates:

  • A 2% annual tax on wealth between 1,000 and 10,000 times the median household wealth.
  • A 4% tax on wealth between 10,000 and 100,000 times the median household wealth.
  • A 6% tax on wealth between 100,000 and 1,000,000 times the median household wealth.
  • An 8% tax on wealth exceeding 1,000,000 times the median household wealth.

Per the US Census Bureau, the median household wealth in 2021 was $166,900. So the first tier 2% wealth tax would kick in at $166,900,000, and so on.

This would affect only very high levels of household wealth. To put that in perspective, according to the Federal Reserve, the wealth level that puts you into the top 0.1% of households in 2019 Q3 was $38,233,372. So if enacted, this Act would touch a really small number of outrageously wealthy households. Also, their taxable amount would be peanuts by their own standards.

The legislation would also require at least a 30% IRS audit rate on households affected by the new wealth tax. One recent estimate indicated that the richest Americans dodge taxes on more than 20% of their earnings, costing the federal government around $175 billion in revenue each year.

The immediate argument is that this tax will never pass as long as the filibuster is intact. And here’s how the work of both authors comes together. We see the “it will never pass” objection from journalists and pundits who try to appear savvy in the ways of DC. On any cable news show, someone is sure to jump up to say it.

The paradox is that if you look at the Congressional Record and flip to the special orders section and extensions of remarks, you’ll notice they’re filled with speeches and statements on behalf of recently introduced bills which the sponsors know will never pass as written. So why do they do it?

Because the point of introducing a bill is not just to pass it in the current session of Congress. It never has been. There is a tradition going back to the earliest days of Congress of introducing bills to make arguments and advance debate. Many famous members of Congress (think Ted Kennedy, Thaddeus Stevens, John Quincy Adams) sponsored or backed multiple bills they knew were not going to become laws.

They did it because they knew that debates over bills that will become laws don’t occur in a vacuum. They happen in the greater context of the debate in Congress over issues which are influenced by every other bill under consideration. And of course, you’ve gotta start somewhere.

Jumping to the conclusion “it will never pass” isn’t being savvy, it’s a sign you’ve missed the point. And it’s a sign of the vapidity of so many journalists and pundits that it’s the first thing out if their mouths. It’s never a good idea to take cues from the stuffed shirts on Fox, CNN and Meet The Press.

This graduated wealth tax is a good start and sets a precedent: There is an amount of wealth that is ruinous to democracy. Taxing it is a necessary condition for preserving democratic governance.

It is true that Congress, as it is presently constructed, will not pass this, or other badly needed legislation. A genuine revolution in thinking will be required. Both Wesley Lowery and Bob Love point us toward fresh thinking about how we start dealing with what we consider to be intractable problems.

Wrongo still has hope for the younger generations who are suffering the consequences of all this government sanctioned selfishness.

Change is coming.

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Henry Kissinger’s Reputation

The Daily Escape:

Sunset, Flaming Gorge Reservoir Recreation Area, UT – August 2023 photo by Doreen Lawrence. The Gorge is the largest reservoir on the Green River.

Welcome to your Monday wakeup call! Wrongo has lived a long life, but he’s still 20 years younger than Henry Kissinger. Kissinger turned 100 in May. When Wrongo was in his late teens, he was protesting against the war in Vietnam. At that point, Kissinger was already a foreign policy advisor to the failed presidential campaigns of Nelson Rockefeller.

He would go on to become Nixon’s national security adviser and Secretary of State, a crucial figure overseeing the conflicts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, that many say included war crimes. Kissinger was never indicted, but Anthony Bourdain wrote the following about Kissinger in his 2001 book “A Cook’s Tour”:

“Once you’ve been to Cambodia, you’ll never stop wanting to beat Henry Kissinger to death with your bare hands. You will never again be able to open a newspaper and read about that treacherous, prevaricating, murderous scumbag sitting down for a nice chat with Charlie Rose or attending some black-tie affair for a new glossy magazine without choking. Witness what Henry did in Cambodia—the fruits of his genius for statesmanship—and you will never understand why he’s not sitting in the dock at The Hague next to Milošević. While Henry continues to nibble nori rolls and remaki at A-list parties, Cambodia, the neutral nation he secretly and illegally bombed, invaded, undermined, and then threw to the dogs, is still trying to raise itself up on its one remaining leg.”

But unlike other possible US war criminals like Reagan and Nixon, Kissinger has never needed to rehabilitate his reputation. As Rebecca Gordon says:

“….despite his murderous rap sheet, the media and political establishment has always fawned over him.”

Kissinger is remembered for his initiative to open diplomatic relations between the US and China in 1972, though full normalization of relations with China would not occur until 1979.

Kissinger’s second innovation was inventing the for-profit third act of a public service career. Before him, former foreign policy principals usually wrote a memoir, gave the occasional foreign policy speech, and maybe became head of a nonprofit.

But Kissinger pioneered a for-profit third act in 1982 when he and Brent Scowcroft founded Kissinger Associates (with the help of a loan from the international banking firm of E.M. Warburg, Pincus) to offer advisory services to corporate clients. Kissinger’s prime selling point was that he had access to the corridors of power, not only in Washington, but in Beijing and Moscow.

Wrongo started out being a fanboy, having read Kissinger’s 1957 book “Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy” while in high school. It criticized the Eisenhower Administration’s “massive retaliation” nuclear doctrine. It also caused much controversy at the time by proposing the use of tactical nuclear weapons on a regular basis to win wars. Once Wrongo was running a tactical nuclear missile base in the mid-1960s, he was no longer a fan.

Wrongo met Kissinger in the mid-1980s at an event hosted by David Rockefeller at his Pocantico Hills estate. HK was walking his dog, a particularly obstreperous Golden Retriever. Wrongo asked “What’s the dog’s name?” Kissinger replied: “Madman”.  Could there be a more perfect name for a Kissinger family pet?

Kissinger provided advice, both formal and informal, to every president from Eisenhower to Trump (though apparently, not yet to Biden). His fingers are all over the foreign policies of both major Parties. And in all those years, no “serious” American news outlet ever reminded the world of Kissinger’s long history of bloody intervention in other countries.

In fact, as his hundredth birthday approached, he was fawned over in an interview with PBS NewsHour anchor Judy Woodruff. From Rebecca Gordon:

“Fortunately, other institutions have not been so deferential. In preparation for Kissinger’s 100th, the National Security Archive, a center of investigative journalism, assembled a dossier of some of its most important holdings on his legacy.”

A third thing that Kissinger is associated with is the use of the concept of “Realpolitik” in foreign policy. It means conducting diplomatic policies based primarily on considerations of the reality on the ground, rather than strictly following ideology or moral and ethical premises.

Realpolitik has come to mean something quite different in the US: It is associated not with “what is” but with “what ought to be” on the ground. In Kissinger’s realpolitik, actions are good only when they sustain and advance American strategic power. Any concern for human beings that stand in the way, or for the law and the Constitution, are not legitimate.

More from Gordon:

“That is the realpolitik of Henry Alfred Kissinger, an ethical system that rejects ethics as unreal. It should not surprise anyone that such a worldview would engender in a man with his level of influence a history of crimes against law and humanity.”

The idea that the only “realistic” choices for generations of America’s leaders require privileging American global power over any other consideration has led us to our current state — a dying empire whose citizens live in an ever-more dangerous world.

Wrongo knew about Kissinger while in high school 60 years ago. There are thousands of Boomers who worked around him in government and the military who have clear personal memories of his actions. The late Christopher Hitchens wrote “The Trial of Henry Kissinger” which examines his alleged war crimes. These link Kissinger to war casualties in Vietnam and Cambodia, massacres in Bangladesh and Timor, and assassinations in Chile and Cyprus.

Not surprisingly, there are a number of countries HK’s had to avoid visiting in his “retirement” lest he be taken into custody on war-crimes charges.

And yet, he was Hilary Clinton’s foreign policy guru. He remains a respected political elder. It is as if we, as a nation, regularly put any of our memories older than last week down the memory hole to be incinerated. Of course, if nobody remembers anything inconvenient, then no one can be guilty of anything.

A thought game: Which living person gets sent into Hell first? Who should go second? Wrongo will start. First, Kissinger. Second, Dick Cheney. Your turn.

Time to wake up America! Some of our politicians deserve trials. To help you wake up, listen to the late Peter Tosh’s 1969 tune “You Can’t Blame The Youth”:

Sample Lyrics:

So, you can’t blame the youth of today
You can’t fool the youth
You can’t blame the youth
You can’t fool the youth

[Verse 3]
All these great men were doin’
Robbin’, a rapin’, kidnappin’ and killin’
So called great men were doin’
Robbin’, rapin’, kidnappin’

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The Coming $73 Trillion Wealth Transfer

The Daily Escape:

We’ve been on Cape Cod for a few days visiting daughter Kelly. Here’s a sunset photo taken this week at Campground beach, Cape Cod, MA – August 2023 iPhone photo by Wrongo. Smoke from Canadian wildfires made the sunset colors more vibrant.

Welcome to our Saturday Soother! But first, let’s talk about the coming generational transfer of wealth that’s underway as the wealthiest generation (the boomers) retire. According to Ben Carlson, 10,000 baby boomers will be retiring every day between now and the end of this decade.

The first boomers were born in 1946, meaning they’re 77 and on the fast track to 80 years old. Fortune Magazine pegs the wealth transfer from boomers to their kids at $73 trillion (with another $12 trillion going to charity). That means the boomers have $85 trillion in personal wealth!

That sounds great, since so many in our younger generations really could use a little help right now. But fewer people than you might expect will actually receive a sizable inheritance. This is due to the fact that the top 10% of America’s wealthy own something like 90% of the stock market. The concentration of today’s wealth will lead to fewer people benefiting from the generational handoff.

Here’s a chart from the NYT:

According to the NYT, ultra-high net worth households — people with $5 million to $20 million in liquid net worth — make up 1.5% of the population but will constitute 42% of the money that gets passed down in the years ahead. Many of them are boomers. From the NYT:

“A key reason there are such large soon-to-be-inherited sums is the uneven way boomers superbly benefited from price growth in the financial and housing markets. The average price of a US house has risen about 500% since 1983, when most baby boomers were in their 20s and 30s, prime years for household formation.

As US corporations have grown into global behemoths, those deeply invested in the stock market have found even bigger returns: The stock market, as measured by the benchmark S&P 500 index, is up by more than 2,800% since the beginning of 1983…”

Those rates of growth in financial and real estate assets will probably never be seen again. We’re passing a slow growth economy on to the next generations, while their own salaries and savings are having trouble keeping up with inflation.

Some worry that retiring baby boomers will crash the stock market by spending down their portfolios in retirement, leaving nothing to inherit. While it could happen, it’s unlikely that it will. The inequality of stock ownership means few people in the top 10% will never come close to spending all of their wealth in retirement.

So the wealth transfer will be more of a stream than a tsunami. Given the longevity of the wealthy, the money is going to be passed down slowly over time. A married couple that is retiring today has a 50% chance of at least one spouse living into their 90s.

Wrongo sees more and more people in the younger generations talking about how much they need help from their parents right now rather than decades down the road. The challenge is that parents need to be sure that if they make early transfers of wealth, that they keep enough on hand to maintain themselves securely in their advancing old age.

This can only be done by families having honest discussions around very awkward subjects. Talking about it can be helpful. It may be possible to work something out where some of the inheritance is parsed out slowly so the parents can enjoy seeing the kids (or grandkids) use some of the money while they’re still here.

Enough! It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we ignore the also-ran candidate show that the Republicans put on in Wisconsin, and where we also ignore the perp walk in Atlanta. Instead, let’s focus on clearing our heads for next week’s outrages.

To help clear your head, grab a comfy chair by a window, and pour a mug of cold brew over ice. Now, watch and listen to Beethoven’s “Septet, op. 20”. It had its first performance in 1800 and was one of Beethoven’s most popular works during his lifetime, much to the composer’s dismay! He ultimately wished he had never written the piece.

Today we listen to the first movement, “Adagio – Allegro con brio” played in 2014 by the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne, Germany. The WDR is a German radio orchestra:

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The Problems With Childcare

The Daily Escape:

Sunset with Cosmos flowers, Blue Ridge Mountains, Franklin, NC – August 2023 photo by Amy Barr

Monday’s Wake Up Call is that we’re in the middle of a childcare crisis, one that dates back to WWII. Daycare costs too much, daycare workers don’t earn enough, and many daycares don’t make money and are going out of business.

Today, anyone who has tried shopping for day care knows that it’s a tough marketplace. Care.com, an online platform where people can hire housekeepers, pet caretakers, nannies, and more, publishes a yearly Cost of Care Report to help US families understand the cost of childcare. Their June 2023 report found that on average, US parents spend 27% of their household income on childcare expenses:

 “Households with children make up 40% of the total US population. And with a national family median household income of $91K, child care costs for the typical American family are even more staggering:

– 45% of families earning less than $100K annually will spend more than $18,000 on childcare in 2023, amounting to 18% of their household income (HHI).

-43% of families earning less than $75K will spend more than $18,000, amounting to 24% of their HHI.

-39% of families earning less than $50K per year will spend more than $18,000, amounting to a whopping 36% of their HHI.”

And increasingly, economists are saying that more women would be working if childcare was available. From Axios:

“In a research note about Friday’s jobs report, the chief economist at consulting firm RSM US did something surprising: Instead of talking about rate hikes or soft landings, he made the case for universal child care.”

Axios quotes RSM’s Joe Brusuelas:

“Childcare for kids under the age of 5 is increasingly an issue for more mainstream economists who are concerned about the prospect of long-term labor shortages in the US. Universal childcare is the most realistic way to help expand the labor force at a time when the economy needs workers the most,”

More:

“The US needs more workers, and there are more women sitting on the sidelines of the labor market than men.

-Right now, close to 86% of working-age men are employed compared with 75% of women. That’s a record for women, but it’s also far below the rates for men — there’s room to grow.

-Substantial childcare investments, like those proposed in the now defunct Build Back Better bill, could increase mothers’ employment by 7 percentage points, with bigger jumps for low-income families, according to estimates in an NBER paper published last year.”

The underlying problem is the economics of childcare. First, it’s difficult to get information about childcare costs either online or over the phone: Daycares often only share their prices after you have visited their facilities. And many daycares have waitlists stretching from six months to a year.

Economists say that long waitlists are a classic sign that something’s wrong with that particular marketplace. In this case, waitlists indicate that daycare prices are too low. But parents say that the price for daycare is actually too high. NPR reports that the median price in daycare for an infant in a large county in the U.S. is $17,000 a year. Also, more than 60% of families can’t afford the full cost of quality day care.

Meanwhile, daycare owners can barely afford to stay open. NPR interviewed a daycare provider in Iowa who said that salaries are 83% of their monthly budget:

“Five percent goes to their loan payment. 4% is operating expenses, cleaning supplies, snow removal, play kitchens, things like that. Three percent is utilities. Another 3% goes to groceries….And 2% is for their insurance and their building insurance and worker’s comp.”

Along with labor, that equals 100%, meaning the center makes no profit. It’s probable that the daycare owner’s pay is in the 83% labor total, but still it means zero profit. The Iowa daycare pays its staff between $12 to $15 an hour, while the local Chick-Fil-A advertises $16.75/hour to start. The Iowa daycare has a census of 72 kids, which requires 25 staff.

Daycares are required by law to hire a ratio of staff/per child, a higher number than other low-wage industries, like fast foods need. In fast food, labor is about 25% of the total costs, and the volume of sales is in the tens of thousands, not the 72 kids that a wage increase would effect in the Iowa daycare.

Since labor costs are such a  high percentage of total costs in daycare, increasing wages means prices paid by families of children in daycare have to rise drastically to cover the higher costs. Wrongo did a back of the envelope calculation for the Iowa center. If their base pay was $12/hour and it was raised to $15, the average monthly charge for one of the 72 children already in daycare would increase by $360/month, or about 47%!

The broken system is made worse in the US because we don’t have long maternity and paternity leaves.

Funding for childcare that was put in place during the pandemic is set to run out in September. Once we hit that “childcare cliff,” 3.2 million children will lose federal funding. More centers will either have to raise prices, cut staff or shut their doors.

Universal childcare has a tortured history in the US. During World War II, women replaced men in the domestic workforce. But who would take care of the children? The US government answered by enacting the Lanham Act, the first and only universal child care program in American history. An estimated 550,000 to 600,000 children received care through these facilities, which cost parents 50 to 75 cents per child, per day. The program ended in 1946.

Nixon vetoed a universal childcare bill in 1971 that would have created federally-funded public childcare centers across the US because Conservatives argued that the bill was communist and that it would be the end of the American family. A group called Iowans for Moral Education asked “Whose Children? Yours or the State’s?”

Time to wake up America! If you don’t want society to help take care of kids, you’re an asshole no matter what reason you give for being against funding. These kids didn’t ask to be here and they have done nothing to deserve not having societal support. If you think you can make America great again by making it harder to take care of kids, you’re wrong.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to a scene from the 2003 film “Daddy Daycare”. In this scene, Charlie (Eddie Murphy) and Kim (Regina King) try to find a good preschool for their son Ben, but it turns out to be impossible. Life’s still like this 20 years later:

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Ukraine War Reveals Our Broken Military Supply Chain

The Daily Escape:

Archangel Falls, Zion NP, UT – August 2023 photo by Torsten Hartmann Photography

The most important thing we’ve learned from the Ukraine War is that the US isn’t ready for a protracted war. One of the big reasons why, as The Insider says, America no longer builds weapons the way it used to. And we need to start building weapons again at tempo.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has drawn a similar conclusion about US weapons manufacturing: There is no surge capacity and it will take years to revive it. According to their study, replacing the inventory of the critical items used in Ukraine, like 155 millimeter artillery shells, will take 4-7 years; Javelin missiles will take 8 years to replace; Stinger missiles 18 years. Before the Ukraine War broke out, the US was producing only about 14,000 155mm shells per year, enough for two days of fighting in Ukraine at current usage rates.

This scramble for ammunition reflects how ill-prepared the US and its allies are to sustain an intense and/or protracted land war.

Think back to America’s weapons building capabilities during World War II. We became an industrial powerhouse, cranking out warships and aircraft at a breakneck pace. One example: The Navy built ships in just weeks — its fleet grew from just 700 to over 6,000 over the course of the war.

The US maintained this capacity for decades but, as The Insider reports:

“Nowadays, it might take years to build a US Navy ship. The reasons for this are complex — shifted priorities, increased technology on board…labor costs — but the effect is clear: In a high-intensity conflict, the US would face challenges in not only producing vessels but also repairing any ships damaged in battle.”

These aren’t the only weapons that are in short supply. The Pentagon issued a study in April on the contraction of our Defense Contracting industry, which went from 52 primary contractors in the 1990s down to just six today. (full disclosure: Wrongo owns what is for him, a substantial number of shares in one of the six companies.)

During Clinton’s presidency, following the fall of the Soviet Union, Defense Secretary Bill Perry convened defense industry CEOs (known in the industry as the “last supper”) and told them that they should not assume production contracts would be maintained at Cold War levels, and they needed to diversify to survive. Many of the companies got out of defense production, and those that remained merged to secure market share of what became dwindling orders from the Pentagon.

This insured that US weapons suppliers wouldn’t be ready for a future that included China’s defense spending surge, the Russia-China strategic partnership, or today’s war in Ukraine.

Now, the Pentagon is revisiting whether industry consolidation has gone too far.

The WSJ reports that today, the industrial base of defense vendors is about 55,000 companies, down from 69,000 in 2016, and many of them are small firms. This smaller base has become a choke point as shortages of labor, chips, rocket motors and other components are stymieing efforts to boost arms production. The WSJ quotes Halimah Najieb-Locke, the Pentagon’s deputy assistant secretary of defense in charge of industrial-base issues, that the Pentagon:

“…is increasingly reliant on a smaller number of contractors for these critical capabilities….That impacts everybody’s ability to ramp production.”

These supply chain issues also dog the global arms manufacturing industry. US companies hold the first five spots in the top 10 ranking of arms sales, with China taking another four. The consolidated sales of the top five have fallen since the start of the Ukraine War.

Having this paradoxical slowdown in sales amid an increase in demand speaks to the larger challenges of a defense contractor base that is geared to peacetime production. The Defense Department has a role in this failure, since they rarely award contracts for multiyear procurements beyond current requirements. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. CQ Brown said that the military hasn’t focused enough on keeping a steady flow of munitions production and procurement:

“In some cases, because you don’t have a threat on your doorstep, munitions aren’t…high on our priority list…”

Making the age-old point that sometimes, “just in time” isn’t. More from the WSJ: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Lockheed and second-ranked Raytheon Technologies Corp. jointly produce…Javelin antitank missiles, but they expect it will take two years to double output that is now at around 400 a month.”

More:

“Greg Hayes, chief executive at Raytheon, said that Ukraine has burned through five years of Javelin production since February and 13 years’ worth of Stinger antiaircraft missiles.”

Aerojet Rocketdyne is an example of a small but crucial cog in the defense industry. It builds the rocket motors used in the Javelin and Stinger missiles deployed in Ukraine. Labor and supplier issues have delayed its deliveries of rocket motors. Raytheon, who makes the Javelin along with Lockheed, said it will be 2024 before Aerojet catches up with engine orders.

The US is also facing a nearly $19 billion backlog in arms sales to Taiwan. Control of the Pacific would be a crucial part of any war with China, and Beijing has the world’s largest navy. According to a 2022 Pentagon report, the country has about 340 ships and submarines. The US, meanwhile, has fewer than 300 warships. Despite that, the US is committed to growing its fleet. Its number of ships is expected to increase to 350 by the 2040s.

To keep up with China, the US will need to build more ships and submarines more quickly. But it has a smaller number of shipyards and a skilled-labor shortage.

All of this will take money, billions of it. But we’re already first in the world’s defense spending. The worst military equipment is equipment that isn’t unavailable when it’s needed. That is not to say that the Defense Contractors should be given a blank check, but we are in dangerous times.

The US spends more on national defense than the next ten countries combined. Defense spending accounts for 12% of all federal spending and nearly half of US discretionary spending. The Defense Contractors are floating on a sea of profits from their captured Pentagon customer.

But is it better to spend extra dollars to have weapons inventory on hand than pay the much higher political cost of a military failure? Can those dollars be found within the existing defense budget rather than by adding to it? From a strategic viewpoint, shouldn’t we build capacity in peacetime when we don’t yet need it (while hoping never to), so that if the US does need it, the capital assets are in place?

The real issue is the stop/start government procurement process. We saw this in N95 mask sourcing, where domestic suppliers downsized over the years to a point where they couldn’t meet the surge in demand when Covid hit. After they ramped up, the government walked away from them when mask mandates ended.

This is also true in defense. Over the last 25 years, Congress has passed more than 120 Continuing Resolutions to fund the Pentagon instead of annual appropriations bills. With Continuing Resolutions comes chronic uncertainty for companies about when they’ll get paid, or when they can proceed to a new phase of weapons development or production.

Nothing is forcing the DOD to only do business with a small group of contractors (other than no one else bids on the contracts because the DOD won’t award to them). The issue is a shrinking domestic manufacturing base, and a lack of sustained business in the defense sector to support a larger field of competitors.

Market forces require efficiency. Sadly, efficiency comes at the cost of resiliency. National security priorities should deal with the stop/start issues that face our defense industry. In 2020, the National Defense Industrial Association’s report on the readiness of the Defense Industrial Base said 27% of critical defense supplier industries would likely experience shortages in the event of a surge in demand for combat-essential products.

And two years later, it happened in Ukraine.

Over the longer term, the US should develop an industrial reserve policy that pays companies to maintain excess capacity, such as warehousing critical, long lead-time parts. Much of today’s production challenges could be easily resolved by giving selected weapons or weapons systems a “protected” status, making them outside of the usual DOD acquisition and contracting rules that limit the flexibility and commitment needed to ensure a continuous production line.

This strategy would be expensive. But Russia’s war in Ukraine has reinforced the necessity of maintaining a deep inventory of weapons which we no longer have today. And it’s no longer a question of whether the US industrial base is prepared to rapidly surge production. It’s clear that we are not, because the necessary investments have not been made.

(hat tip to Brendan K. for his useful insights for this article)

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 23, 2023

NY Magazine has an article about Biden’s weirdest White House habits. What struck Wrongo was this:

“While you might think the addition of a cat would make the White House feel more like a home, it seems that hasn’t solved the problem. In January 2023 the president revealed that his new cat Willow is adding to his discomfort.

“Willow may walk in here any time now. She has no limits” Biden said. “You think I’m kidding, I’m not. Especially in the middle of the night when she climbs up and lays on top of my head.”

No wonder Biden seems to have less hair. In Wrongo’s experience, dogs will cuddle but would never sleep on your head…although maybe nose to nose. NY Mag must be starved for real content. On to cartoons.

Florida redefines slavery’s harm:

White guy’s thickest whitewash now available in Florida:

RFK jr isn’t on the same planet that his father walked:

GOP helps RFK jr in tearing down Camelot and building SCAMALOT:

This Fall’s new TV hit:

GOP persists in its Trumpy love:

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You Say You Want A Revolution

The Daily Escape:

17 Palms Oasis, Anza-Borrego SP, CA – June 2023 photo by Paulette Donnellon. When Wrongo and Ms. Right lived in LA, we hiked to this spot twice with grandkids.

This year, the Fourth of July just won’t let go of Wrongo. Political historian Eli Merritt has an op-ed in the LA Times: The Fourth of July is all about America’s first principle — the right of revolution:

“This right of resistance against inequality and tyranny is the American way. It is the essence of the American experiment, beginning in the 1760s and 1770s with the colonists’ defiance of the Stamp Act, the Townshend Acts, the Tea Act and the Intolerable Acts; and in the 19th and 20th centuries with the abolitionist movement, women’s suffrage movement, the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th amendments, and the civil rights movement; and today with nonviolent fights for racial justice, equal voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights and women’s reproductive rights.”

We’re a country born of revolution. But after the Jan 6 insurrection, people are probably put off by the very idea of it. It’s what Trump’s seditionists did when they stormed the Capitol. Their goal was to prevent, or at least to obstruct, the certification of the 2020 presidential election.

And they did so by summoning the spirit of 1776. But in contrast to the J6 “protesters”, the people who approved the Declaration signed their names to a document. They didn’t wear hoods, masks, or camo gear and beat up people. The country’s “revolution” began with paper, pen and ink, with “revolutionaries” plainly identifying themselves. As Merritt points out:

“…the Declaration of Independence is a nonviolent manifesto. It makes no mention of swords, guns or war. Separately, the Continental Congress called upon American patriots to arm themselves, yet only in self-defense of God-given natural rights.”

Yet here we are in 2023, facing once again a fight for rights that we had already won, says The Guardian’s Rebecca Solnit: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“The first thing to remember about the damage done by the US supreme court this June and the June before is that each majority decision overturns a right that we had won…. What this means is that the right wing of the US supreme court is part of a gang of reactionaries engaging in backlash.”

In the 303 Creative v. Elenis case, the Supreme Court made a decision based on nothing, in which a woman refuses to perform a service she didn’t provide, to a gay couple that didn’t exist, in the name of religious “liberty.” That six Supremes jumped on this case is a travesty. We either back down and accept the direction these extreme Justices are pushing the country toward, or we fight.

Wrongo wants to fight, just like he did in the 1960s. It won’t be easy to win these rights back, but it isn’t impossible. And this from WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin:

“On…Independence Day, which celebrates rebellion against a monarch lacking consent of the governed, it behooves us to dedicate ourselves to robust and authentic democracy: government of the people, by the people, for the people — not by arrogant right-wing justices.”

The Supreme Court is the point of the American Conservative movement’s spear, and it must be our goal to blunt their extremisim. The ballot box is our only way out of this mess, so it will take an immense amount of organizing and effort to overcome the gerrymandering, active voter suppression and massive disinformation campaigns conducted by the media.

The current SCOTUS cannot change our beliefs and values. These rights are ours, regardless of what six Supremes say. From Solnit:

“If you didn’t believe that equal access and rights were wrong yesterday…you don’t have to believe it now. Not just because those rights were denied by six justices….”

The country is on our side. Gallup has a new poll of approve/disapprove of the Supreme Court:

This shows that the people  agree with blunting the power of today’s Supreme Court. The final words go to Solnit:

“…history shows us that when we come together with ferocious commitment to a shared goal we can be more powerful than institutions and governments. The right would like us to feel defeated and powerless. We can feel devastated and still feel powerful or find our power. This is not a time to quit. It’s a time to fight.”

We must take every available measure in our democracy to revoke consent and remedy these unconstitutional decisions. It will require active engagement in all levels of the democratic political process, from local school boards to the presidency. We can’t take any political office for granted.

Help new voters obtain ID and register to vote. Educate yourself about the candidates, vote in the primaries. Get your friends and families to vote. Make sure no seat goes uncontested wherever a GOP politician holds office or runs without opposition.

Above all, do not let them assume that you consent to the loss of our rights.

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July 4, 2023

The Daily Escape:

Kilauea Caldera showing a blackened lava lake, Hawaii Volcanoes NP – June 2023 photo by J. Wei for the NPS

Kilauea stopped erupting on June 19, but the threat of another eruption is always present. That could be a metaphor for America in 2023: We could erupt at any moment.

The 1960s were an optimistic time. There were demonstrations for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. There was police violence against the demonstrators, and assassinations of JFK and MLK. But a throughline of those times was a belief that righteous change was possible.

Wrongo graduated from Georgetown in 1966. His specialty was American colonial history. Those also were times of optimism, and there also were factions and different priorities and beliefs throughout the land.

Back in the 18th century, we overcame our differences, declared our independence, and formed a nation.

Now, 247 years after our revolution, it seems that staying united is difficult, if not impossible. Today, facts are fungible, and so is the truth. As Wrongo stated in his last column, about one third of Americans fail to vote. They are apathetic because they can’t see what would change if they did vote.

Having one third of Americans regularly fail to vote has surrendered control over our politics and our courts to a minority, mostly a few at the top, supported by some people in the middle, and enabled by the apathy of most of the rest of us.

Worse, most of those in today’s controlling minority are extremists. They have exploited the imperfections in our system to impose a return to the social mores and politics of an earlier time.

The best example of this is the string of far-Right decisions handed down in 2022 by the Supreme (Extreme) Court. From Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern:

“Consider the issues that SCOTUS has resolved….The constitutional right to abortion: gone. States’ ability to limit guns in public: gone….Effective constraints around separation of church and state: gone. The bar on prayer in public schools: gone. Effective enforcement of Miranda warnings: gone. The ability to sue violent border agents: gone. The Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases at power plants: gone.”

Vast areas of law that took decades to establish were overturned in a year.

And in 2023, the Court’s reactionary majority has continued to overturn more of the American social order. Those rulings: ending affirmative action, preventing the forgiveness of student loans and an egregious decision on gay rights, show that the Court has lost any sense of judicial restraint.

The Court is no longer “calling balls and strikes” as Chief Justice John Roberts famously said. In fact, there could be a highlight reel of umpire John Roberts’ blown calls. It’s clear that the Extreme Court wants to go further, and given today’s politics, there’s zero risk of the other two branches of government agreeing to override their decisions.

So, on this Fourth of July weekend, let’s hit pause. Let’s take time to reflect on how our founders were able to weave a message that united many factions against a common enemy. It should be very clear that at this point that the common enemy to unite against is the partisan power of a partisan minority.

Real power no longer lies with the People or with their politicians, it resides in the Supreme Court. The antiquated and undemocratic elements of our government: the Electoral College, lifetime tenure for Supreme Court justices and the malapportionment of the Senate, would require Constitutional amendments to fix. But we’re too divided to amend the Constitution.

Imagine attempting to fix the Senate’s malapportionment by getting a Constitutional amendment through that same malapportioned Senate.

But there may be reason for optimism in the fact that the two of this term’s negative rulings related to college students (admissions and debt relief). Those issues will motivate young voters in 2024.

Here are some numbers that give some cause for optimism about younger voters helping to change our politics:

  • Voters 47 and younger will be in the majority beginning in 2028.
  • Younger voters have historically voted in significantly higher numbers for Democrats.
  • Young women, especially young Hispanics and young African Americans are substantially higher voters for Democrats.
  • Fifty-five percent of white male voters under 45 voted Democratic in 2022, as did 52% of younger white females.

Here are a few other facts that should make us optimistic going forward:

  • Abortion was youth’s #1 issue in 2022.
  • Mid-term voter turnout for people under 29 was 23%, lower than 2018 (28%), but much higher than in 2014 (13%).
  • Michigan had the highest youth turnout in the country (37%).
  • Two swing states, Michigan and Pennsylvania, were among the four states to have the highest youth turnout in 2022.

To help you reflect on how we might take back control, let’s listen to Neil Diamond’s “Coming to America” performed at the Greek Theater in Los Angles in 2012.

There are many versions of this tune on YouTube, but this one makes the point that virtually all of us are descended from immigrants, in this case, Diamond’s grandmother, who immigrated from Kyiv:

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